Tony Bennett Finds His Heart in San Francisco 50 Years Later

By Stephen West -
Feb 15, 2012

San Francisco delivered a valentine
to Tony Bennett, the 85-year-old singer who immortalized the
city with his ballad about the place where he left his heart, in
a City Hall ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of the
tune’s recording.

“I always thought it would be a local song,” Bennett said
at the event yesterday. “But it became international.”

Bennett performed “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”
publicly for the first time in late 1961 at the Venetian Room of
San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel. He recorded it the next year,
and the song won a Grammy award for record of the year and
became the signature ballad of Bennett’s career.

At the City Hall event, a brass ensemble from the San
Francisco Symphony opened the proceedings with a rendition of
the song. Then Mayor Ed Lee and his wife escorted Bennett down a
red-carpeted staircase to kick off the congratulations,
including video tributes from U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and
former Mayor Willie Brown.

“You’ve helped us climb not halfway to the stars, but all
the way,” Lee said.

Musical groups ranging from a chorus of more than 100
schoolchildren to a star of the satirical musical “Beach
Blanket Babylon,” decked out in a pink dress and plastic crown,
offered their versions of “I Left My Heart.”

Tony Bennett Suite

San Francisco Giants President Larry Baer announced that
the best suite at the ballpark would be named the Tony Bennett
Suite, adding that the song has been played 573 times so far
after Giants wins at AT&T Park.

Almost the only person on stage who didn’t sing was Bennett
himself, who smiled, waved and applauded the performers.

“I want to thank Ralph Sharon for finding this song,”
Bennett said, referring to his longtime accompanist. Sharon
first proposed using the tune when the pair were on the road in
Little Rock, Arkansas, Bennett recalled.

The ballad, with music by George Cory and lyrics by
Douglass Cross, was an unlikely candidate to become a classic.
It was released by Columbia Records in 1962 as the “B” side of
a 45-rpm disc featuring another Bennett song, “Once Upon a
Time,” according to Sylvia Weiner, a spokeswoman for the
singer.

Bennett hasn’t settled quietly into retirement in his
native New York. He performed “It Had to Be You” in a duet
with Carrie Underwood on Sunday night in Los Angeles for the
Grammy awards broadcast. On Thursday he’s scheduled to play the
Pala Casino Spa Resort in San Diego County. He’s released more
than 100 albums -- most recently, “Duets II” last year -- and
earned 17 Grammys, including one for lifetime achievement.

Bennett returned to the Fairmount’s Venetian Room last
night to sing the song again at a fundraising dinner benefiting
heart research at the University of California, San Francisco.